Green Party seeking ballot access

Stant, Coplen appear in South Bend to promote partyÂ?s plight

Stant, Coplen appear in South Bend to promote partyÂ?s plight

May 20, 2006|By JAMES WENSITS Tribune Political Writer

SOUTH BEND Â? ItÂ?s not easy being Green, not if you are Green Party Indiana secretary of state candidate Bill Stant, or party activist Jim Coplen, who walked the length of the state to call attention to his partyÂ?s plight.

Stant, 49, an investment adviser and stockbroker who lives in Nashville, Ind., and Coplen, were here Saturday to call attention to StantÂ?s quest to get ballot access for his party.

For Coplen, a former South Bend resident who now lives in LaPorte, the South Bend visit was the last stop in a grueling trek that started at the Lincoln Boyhood Memorial near the Ohio River in southern Indiana and ended here Saturday.

For Stant, it was another opportunity to collect precious signatures to aid his effort to obtain a permanent ballot line for the Green Party in Indiana for future elections.

To get there, he needs to get 30,000 certified signatures from Indiana residents by June 30, then win at least 2 percent of the vote for Indiana secretary of state in the fall election.

Stant estimated that his party has about 12,000 members in Indiana, only about 50 of whom are actively working to get him on the ballot.

So far, he said, he has about 12,000 signatures, including the hundred or so that he collected during a Saturday visit to the FarmerÂ?s Market in South Bend.

Before CoplenÂ?s walk, Stant estimated that he had collected just 8,000 signatures in a process that began in 2004.

Stant estimated that he may need as many as 50,000 signatures overall in order to get 30,000 names that can be certified by county clerks around the state.

The confident Stant said he has been traveling around the state, setting off Â?prairie firesÂ? of grass roots, democratic activism and hopes to bring people back to the process.

Â?WeÂ?re not in trouble,Â? he asserted when asked about the number of signatures he still needs to collect and the nearness of the deadline.

Stant said his campaign has raised little money because Â?we have deliberately refused to play the money game,Â? a game, he said, which keeps the Â?political eliteÂ? in power.

In addition to running for office, Stant has also joined the protest against Indiana Gov. Mitch DanielsÂ? effort to lease the Indiana Toll Road, and has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of that effort in a Brown County trial court.

To Stant, the issue is that Â?big moneyÂ? has stolen the election process from ordinary voters. Â?If we canÂ?t take it back,Â? he said, Â?then we are all in a lot of trouble.Â?